Martin Luther King, Jr. Spreads the Gospel of Four-Wheel Drive

It was inevitable that, in this crass era, the moral titans of our history would eventually be used to sell pickup trucks. Ram Trucks spent upwards of $5 million of its corporate dollars on a Super Bowl ad Sunday night. The brand used that prized commercial space to hock large vehicles by overlaying an audio excerpt of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1968 speech, "The Drum Major Instinct," over a series of ultra-patriotic images. Ram is not the first company to call on the words of inspirational figures to sell material products that seem in no way related. But the use of King—in this political era, and during Black History Month, with lines taken largely out of context—seemed particularly tasteless:

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The King Center, established in 1968 by Coretta Scott King, immediately moved to clarify that it did not approve the use of King's voice for the ad:

Neither @TheKingCenter nor @BerniceKing is the entity that approves the use of #MLK’s words or imagery for use in merchandise, entertainment (movies, music, artwork, etc) or advertisement, including tonight’s @Dodge#SuperBowl commercial.

That duty fell to Intellectual Properties Management Inc., an outfit run by King's son, Dexter, which controls his speeches and image. In a statement, managing director Eric Tidwell said the following:

"We found that the overall message of the ad embodied Dr. King's philosophy that true greatness is achieved by serving others. Thus we decided to be a part of Ram's 'Built To Serve' Super Bowl program."

But King's philosophy was hardly limited to encouraging people to serve others. In fact, what he actually said was often diametrically opposed to the kind of basic materialism and Keeping Up With the Joneses energy that clings so doggedly to American capitalism. To illustrate the point, a savvy Twitter user overlaid another speech of King's over the footage from the ad:

OMG someone overlayed that ridiculous Dodge/MLK ad with what King actually said about capitalism and car commercials pic.twitter.com/9IB528mCyt

Beyond the basic indecency of using a martyred Civil Rights hero to sell trucks, the ad is also very much a product of the post-truth era. The great figures of history are now whoever you feel like they were in your gut—that is, whatever you want them to be. King is a frequent target, as some whitewashed version of him is celebrated each January by people like Paul Ryan and Steve King, so they can feel better about themselves while largely obstructing the kind of progress to which he devoted—and gave—his life. In perhaps the most grotesque episode, CNN's resident Trumpist, Jeffrey Lord, called Donald Trump "the Martin Luther King of healthcare" after Trump threatened to hold health insurance subsidy funding hostage during a battle with Democrats. To say this is ahistorical and offensive doesn't even scratch the surface.

The ad features working Americans toiling in the kind of jobs that we think of as the backbone of the economy—Americans who by and large have not gotten a raise in wages or standard of living in decades. Meanwhile, the vast majority of wealth generated has gone towards a tiny percentage of the population, and inequality has mushroomed. Towards the end of his life, King launched the Poor People's Campaign, which operated on the premise that "there must be a radical redistribution of economic and political power." King was in many ways a radical, challenging some of the basic ways we organize our society—and not just on the issue of race. He is not some amorphous kumbaya figure who serves to make people feel better about themselves and their choices.

The concept of truth is under assault in this country. Necessarily, that means history is also in the crosshairs. This is a persistent problem in America, but in the Age of Shamelessness, even Martin Luther King is fair game. That's how, for some among us yesterday, King became a staunch capitalist with unrelenting faith in the power of four-wheel drive.

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